Today is suicide prevention day which is a good way to raise awareness because there is a silence to suicide.

People that feel suicidal or deeply depressed often stay silent about how they are feeling

Each year, over 800,000 people die by suicide and up to 25 times as many make a suicide attempt. Every single one of the people in these statistics have felt that life is no longer worth living. But many of these people won’t have told anyone how they are feeling. Most people will have family, friends, work colleagues and neighbours but when they spoke to these people they didn’t tell them how unbearable they were finding their lives.

I wonder why it is that people suffering emotionally so deeply feel they can’t share their feelings with anyone. There may be a number of reasons:

They may be embarrassed to tell someone

They may feel guilty for feeling this way

They might not want to burden someone else with their problems

They might think how they are feeling will go away on its own

Could you save a life?

The theme of the 2017 World Suicide Prevention Day is ‘Take a minute, change a life.’ This means noticing is someone around you is struggling and checking in with them. You don’t have to have all the answers for them, just let them know you are there and you care. Offering a gentle word of support and listening in a non-judgemental way can make all the difference.

There is no need for silence about suicide. The more open we are in society and communities about it, the more help it will be. .

People who have lived through a suicide attempt have much to teach us about how the words and actions of others are important. They often talk movingly about reaching the point where they could see no alternative but to take their own life, and about the days, hours and minutes leading up to this. They often describe realising that they did not want to die but instead wanted someone to intervene and stop them. Many say that they actively sought someone who would sense their despair and ask them whether they were okay.

Can you imagine saving someone’s life. Just by asking if they are ok? I mean REALLY ok?

You don’t need to be an expert of any kind to help someone. You just need to listen. Often that first opening up to someone is therapeutic to the person feeling suicidal will seek help or be open to seeking help after they have opened up. Its like they are a pressure cooker and they’ve let a bit of the steam out.

The smallest bit of compassion and empathy can be all someone delicate needs to feel that life is worth living.

Suicide affects more than just one life

Obviously it is extremely sad that anyone commits suicide but the pain they leave for those around them can live on forever. A suicide is shocking for all involved. Even if you don’t know someone very well, it can still be shocking and painful.

People left behind often spend years with very raw and painful emotions.

What makes people feel suicidal?

It is often an event like divorce or redundancy that can really bring someone down. Or stress or depression just becomes unbearable. It is so important to look after your mental health and seek support if you feel you need it. Seeking help can make a tremendous difference to how you feel.

The stats around suicide

Suicide is the 15th leading cause of death globally, account for 1.4% of all deaths and

The global suicide rate is 11.4 per 100 000 population

More males 15 in 100,000 are affected than females 8 in 100,000

Suicide is the leading cause of death in people aged 15-24 in many European countries

Depression is the most common psychiatric disorder in people who die by suicide

50% of individuals in high income countries who die by suicide have major depressive disorder at their time of death

For every 1 suicide 25 people make a suicide attempt

60 people are affected by each suicide death. This equates to 48 million people bereaved by suicide worldwide every year

This World Suicide Prevention Day and everyday take a minute to reach out to someone – this can change a life

You might choose to Light a Candle near a Window at 8 PM to support World Suicide Prevention Day 2017 to show your support for suicide prevention, to remember a lost loved one, and for the survivors of suicide.

The Samaritans are an excellent source of support if you need to talk to someone. Their number is 116 123. You do not need to suffer in silence.

Finally, if there is anyone you are concerned about, take a minute to check in with them. It could change their life.

Why every thought is a choice

It’s 2017 and our lives are full of choice. Have you ever thought about how many choices you make in a day? Let’s take a look!

Whether to get up or have another five minutes in bed

What to wear

What to have for breakfast

Which route to take to school run/work

Which piece of work to tackle first

Which emails to reply to first

And so it goes on…

Then you’ve got choices of what to eat, what to buy, what to watch, what to read, who to be friends with, who to talk to, what to read, where to work, work holiday to take… the choices are endless. And let’s not talk about how you want your coffee 🙂

Choose how you feel by changing how you think

But do you ever take time to choose how you think which in turn creates how you feel? This isn’t about turning your emotions off. We need emotions as humans. It’s about understanding that a thought creates a feeling. So if you get caught up in feeling bad, low or depressed and you know that your thoughts are creating these feelings, this gives you the choice.

The choice whether to continue thinking them and feel bad or the choice to have different thoughts and feel different.

Change your story

Aren’t thoughts amazing anyway? A thought is an invisible thing that can be an idea, an anxiety, hold anger or make you feel completely rubbish. A thought can be from the past, present or in the future! Thoughts change worlds and create inventions. Thoughts are humans most powerful asset!

When you have a thought that makes you feel bad it will be because it is attaching itself to a story. A story that you hold in your unconcious mind and connects itself to the thing you feel bad about. When you have the thought, you recall the story unknowingly and your unconcious will also search for other evidence to back it up. Even the silliest little thing that your brain has somehow connected to that story.

For example:

If you are feeling like things don’t go right for you and feeling down about it, you will recall all the times where you think things don’t go right for you and look other times things didn’t go right (or how your brain thinks they didn’t go right if it has aligned that belief to a situation).

It will also look for all the times people said that you didn’t do something right, because your very clever brain is looking for evidence and your unconcious mind has a record of everything that has ever happened in your life. No matter how bad you think your memory is, your unconcious knows! This is how people are able to recall things in Hypnosis when their unconcious mind is fully present.

The choice is yours

So the choice you can make is when you feel yourself slipping into negative thoughts to catch yourself. Stop yourself from falling back into that story which isn’t true and choose a different thought instead.

You can change how you feel about being trapped by emotional pain and not liking yourself if you change your story. Now this might sound impossible and if you need help breaking free from the stories that keep you trapped, then I can help you.

Now here we have looked at how our minds can be naughty and focus on negative stories, but we didn’t cover how our amazing minds can be so powerful when they are being positive! So how about creating some new stories where you are happy and vibrant and looking forward to your day/week/year/life!

This blog is one in a 30 day series about self-development and practical lists we will be making to enhance our lives. I’m using these blogs to provide coaching and advice in my capacity as a qualified coach and Hypnotherapist working locally in West Sussex and Worldwide on Skype.

Quick review of yesterday’s list:

Yesterday you wrote a list of some smoothies you might want to try. Have you got the ingredients yet?

Your thought choices list

Today list is to try and catch negative thoughts as they arise and write them down. You might be surprised how different they feel when you write them down.

5 great smoothie recipes you’ll want to try

Earlier this week I blogged about easy ways to eat more healthily. One of the suggestions was by having smoothies. Before we look at 5 nutritious smoothie recipes, let’s cover some smoothie basics.

The reason healthy eating interests me is I am a Hypnotherapist so I work with people’s minds but in many cases, treatment is about the whole person; mind, body and spirit. I like to keep fit and healthy on a personal level so you could say I have a healthy interest!

How are smoothies different from juices?

Juices extract the liquid and nutrients from the produce that you are juicing and leave behind the pulp. This means you end up with a thin juice, full of nutrients. You should include more vegetables than fruit in your juice or it will be laden with fruit sugars and this will affect your blood sugar. There are different levels of juicer depending how serious you are. The leading person in the juice industry is Jason Vale and he offers free juicing programes several times a year.

Smoothies blend the produce to a thicker consistency and there is no left-over pulp. Smoothies you buy in the shops are often full of sugar from the high fruit content and less nutritious than the ones that you can make for yourself.

What can you put in your smoothie?

Smoothies are a good way to bring healthy foods into your diet easily as no cooking is required! You just whack it all in a suitable blender (some people swear by the Nutribullet. And the Vitamix is the Rolls Royce of the blender world) and it’s ready to drink/eat.

Smoothies can keep you full for hours if you include protein. Your body will love the fibre, vitamins and dense nutrients. You could get your 5 a day in one hit (although it’s now thought we should be aiming for 7-10 portions of fruits and vegetables a day).

Once you start ‘smoothi-ing’! You might want to start create your own recipes. Here are some ingredient ideas. Make vegetables the main ingredient, add some fruit for sweetness, a supplement or two of your choice and a protein to keep you fuller for longer:

Vegetables and fruit

Vegetables

Cucumber and celery both provide a lot of juice and are full of nutrients

Coconut water which is full of electrolytes or coconut, oat, rice of almond milk.

Here are 5 great smoothie recipes you’ll want to try

This blog is one in a 30 day series about self-development and practical lists we will be making to enhance our lives. I’m using these blogs to provide coaching and advice in my capacity as a qualified coach and Hypnotherapist working locally in West Sussex and Worldwide on Skype.

Quick review of yesterday’s list:

Yesterday you wrote a list of chunks of your life and what they might be called. Did anything on that list surprise you?

Today’s list:

Today’s list is one of your easiest ways to health. Just make a list of the smoothies you are going to have this week and the ingredients you need to buy to make them. If you make a delicious smoothie of your own or already have a recipe to share, please put it in the comments. We would love to try it!

What to do if you hate your life and feel depressed

There are many reasons that you feel like you may hate your life and in my experience as a Hypnotherapist with a specialism in helping people with depression, I see themes in the cause of people feeling like this. I have an established way of working with people that feel this way and in about 4 weeks time they feel completely different.

So what are the themes?

The themes tend to be:

Being trapped by emotional pain

Being stuck in a situation that doesn’t feel right

Being caught in a cycle of behaving in a way that is not beneficial

Not liking themselves

Feeling unfulfilled or uncertain about what it is that they want

Although they never feel like it to the person concerned, these reasons are good news! All the things on the list above can be ‘treated’ and changed. With these things out the way, a new life emerges. A life that is possible, ‘doable’ and enjoyable.

There is magic around you everywhere

But you’ve got to want it. You’ve got to take action an be open to making changes. There is no magic wand, but there is magic around you everywhere. And with your issues and barriers out the way, you will see the world differently. Your experience will be different. People will seem different. Life will seem different.

Some magic you might not have thought about recently if you think that you hate your life:

The magic that is reproduction! Isn’t that just amazing? That new people and animals are made all the time!

Nature! The way things grow when and where they should and that nature also gives us food to eat and water to drink.

The world! There are different cultures, speaking different languages living very differently in completely different environments.

Your body! The way all the different systems work together to help you breath, move, think, eat and sleep.

I’m not sure which of those wins! But they are all pure magic.

Let’s look at the themes one at a time:

Being trapped by emotional pain

Life has painful experiences. But it’s not actually the severity of the experience that matches the strength of the pain. Just like physical pain, we have different thresholds. Different things will hurt us in different ways. Some people will fall apart when grieving, others fare better. Some people will be deeply affected by redundancy because it feels like failure and it clashes with their desire to be successful. It’s also a kind of rejection.

Relationships hurt the most it seems. This is because we have two basic psychological needs (Carol Rogers, Psychologist) and we can suffer if those needs are not met. One of the needs is of positive regard like love and trust from other people. So when relationships break down or are troubled, this really affects us. This pain is particularly pertinent when it relates to parents and much emotional pain that people carry is attached in some way to their parents or close family members. Although it can be worrying to address these issues, Hypnotherapy does it in such a way that is safe and secure and people can actually get rid of a lifetime of pain in just a few sessions.

Not dealing with emotional pain can lead to feeling depressed.

Being stuck in a situation that doesn’t feel right

This is usually about a relationship, job or place to live. It may be that you’ve outgrown the situation you are in or it is not fulfilling you in some way. It might be that the situation has changed and you have stayed the same or it may be that you behaved in a certain way to obtain that situation but have realised that actually, you are not being true to yourself.

It might be that you are in a ‘checkmate’ situation where you have realised that the situation you are in is not going to grow in the way that you want it to and you need to make a change. The classic examples here are in jobs where there is no opportunity for progression or the work/life balance is tilted towards work and you want more life.

Being caught in a cycle of behaving in a way that is not beneficial

So many people get caught up in behaviours that are not good for them but it just becomes part of life and they don’t know how to break the cycle on their own. Things like being overweight but not being able to stop overeating or stick to any sort of healthy eating plan, can make people’s lives miserable and zap their confidence.

Sometimes people are unable to stop smoking or addicted to drugs, alcohol or gambling. Being out of control does not feel good and can mean feeling depressed, but it’s usually a symptom of an emotion. So by addressing these emotions the unwanted behaviour often falls away.

Not liking themselves

There are many reasons why people don’t like themselves but they usually stem from two things.

1 – The way we have behaved and it has made us feel bad or maybe guilty

2 – The way someone else has behaved towards us and made us feel bad.

Either way our self-esteem can be very low but again the good news is by letting go of the things that affected you, this makes you open to accept positive changes to your self-esteem. Again, Hypnotherapy is very effective for any ‘work of the self’, especially increasing self-esteem and confidence and easing depression.

Feeling unfulfilled or uncertain about what it is that they want

Do you feel like you are standing on the sidelines watching others succeed and move forward in their lives while you stagnate? If you feel envious of what others have, this can be useful in shaping what it is you want and knowing what it is that you want is a catalyst to getting it!

Feeling unfulfilled plays to our second basic psychological need which is self-actualisation (also identified by psychologist, Carl Rogers). Self-actualisation means bringing all the parts of yourself to life. That means exploring and developing ideas, feeding your interests and maximising your strengths and talents.

For many people life carries them along a particular path and they don’t give much thought to if they are fulfilled. But one day something doesn’t sit right and they can’t figure out what it is. Many of these people benefit from coaching to help them find a path, a mission, a passion to follow.

Thoughts are like magnets

The problem is the more you think about hating your life, the more you create a pathway in your brain to that belief. And that belief becomes like a magnet that attracts other negative thoughts and make things seem worse. sometimes thoughts that you have about your life are because you recall memories of the past.

You can’t trust your brain entirely as it can alter your memories and make things seem different to how they are. The good news is that you can retrain your brain into thinking more positively and make positive thinking the stronger pathway in your brain and a more automatic route for your brain to take in he future.

When you have negative feelings about yourself you are more likely to be sensitive to other people’s negativity and this might affect you. When I work with clients we focus on the centre of them as a person. The things that make them stronger and I teach them how to protect themselves from negativity.

Why do some people seem more resilient than others?

People who don’t give up are less likely to become depressed. They continue to seek resolution to problems and a lot of effort into controlling events. They have belief that what happens to them is within their control. These people experience less stress no matter what their circumstances. Because they feel that taking action changes their situation, they always have something to aim for and a sense of satisfaction when they have taken action. These people do not have ‘victim mentally’.

Having a positive mental attitude, thinking for yourself and being adaptable and open to change and making time for fun will change things for your. Let me show you how 🙂

You are the owner of your life. You can let things happen to you or make things happen to you. If you are ready for change call me today.This blog is one in a 30 day series about self-development and practical lists we will be making to enhance our lives. I’m using these blogs to provide coaching and advice in my capacity as a qualified coach and Hypnotherapist working locally in West Sussex and Worldwide on Skype.

Quick review of yesterday’s list:

Yesterday you wrote a list of how you you at more healthy food easily. I hope you found something you can stick with and feel good about.

Your in pursuit of happiness list

Have you seen the movie ‘in pursuit of happiness’ with Will Smith? It’s a great film where he names the parts of his life. Some are pretty tough!

Today’s list might take a while but try to break your life into chunks and give those chunks name. For example if you had a tough time at school, you might call that ‘hiding’ or ‘surviving’. I’m sure you will be able to think of the right words. Don’t forget the positive chunks! It will help you to think about your life in this way and identify how parts of your life have imprinted on you.

A positive mental attitude is a game changer

The Pollyanna technique means looking for something good to come out of every bad situation. Some people describe this as taking the learnings or we all know ‘every cloud had a silver lining’.

With a positive mental attitude you can overcome issues such as depression, low self-esteem and low confidence. Hypnotherapy is hugely beneficial for a positive mental attitude and helping you regain control over your life. Your progress doesn’t end when your sessions do, once you’ve have a taste of liking your life you won’t want it any other way. A positive mental attitude puts you in control.

Charlie Chaplin’s poem – As I Began to Love Myself

This is a lovely poem by Charlie Chaplin that sums up life. Feel free to share any other poems that you think might help others.

As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering
are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth.
Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY”.

As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody
As I try to force my desires on this person,
even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it,
and even though this person was me.
Today I call it “RESPECT”.

As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life,
and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow.
Today I call it “Maturity”.

As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance,
I am in the right place at the right time,
and everything happens at the exactly right moment.
So I could be calm.
Today I call it “SELF-CONFIDENCE”.

As I began to love myself I quit steeling my own time,
and I stopped designing huge projects for the future.
Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness, things I love to do
and that make my heart cheer, and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm.
Today I call it “SIMPLICITY”.

As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health –
food, people, things, situations, and everything the drew me down and away from myself.
At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism.
Today I know it is “LOVE OF ONESELF”.

As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right,
and ever since I was wrong less of the time.
Today I discovered that is “MODESTY”.

As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past and worry about the future.
Now, I only live for the moment, where EVERYTHING is happening.
Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “FULFILLMENT”.

As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me
and it can make me sick.
But as I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally.
Today I call this connection “WISDOM OF THE HEART”.

We no longer need to fear arguments, confrontations or any kind of problems
with ourselves or others.
Even stars collide, and out of their crashing new worlds are born.
Today I know THAT IS “LIFE”!